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Narrator Rules
Me Telling You What To Do So, here’s the thing. None of this would exist if I didn’t start breaking rules a long time ago. Rules are meant to be broken. Hell, here’s a formal statement from the author: breaking this game’s rules are fun. I’m not perfect and my game isn’t perfect, almost entirely by nature that the game and my writing probably aren’t perfect for you. Throughout this page, I’m going to be telling you what to do a lot. So here’s a BIG disclaimer. All normative and authoritative statements reflect the design of the world, economy, and balance from my original authorship, and function to keep things working the way I like them, both mechanically and tonally. You may find this isn’t how you want to do things. Good. Strange as it may seem, I don’t want you using this book a lot. Think of it as a carpentry book – eventually, you’ll put the book down and just be a carpenter. The more I run and play games, the less I use the book myself. Sometimes, you just play. Sometimes you run games that are outside of what’s indicated, outside of what’s recommended, and outside of what seems intuitive, and they end up being really fun. I want that. If you want to make me proud, show me you don’t need this book. Y’know what? Forget me. Show your players. Storytelling Bloodwine is built in the opposite direction to many other games – the mechanics and numbers are meant to be a backup, while the storytelling itself forms the core of the game. As the Narrator, you aren’t really the storyteller – you’re one storyteller, and so is everyone else at the table. However, as the narrator, you are a special sort of storyteller. While players running adventurers face danger and players running civilians try and stay safe, you as the narrator most often are an adversary. But in terms of storytelling, you’re their friend. The truth is, you’re both. As the narrator, think of yourself as the conductor of a storytelling orchestra. The players will be the heroes and agents – you just need to keep things along the right path. This means helping your players shine, directing focus when they get too overzealous, pumping up the tension and trouble when things are getting slow. At the same time, it can mean stealing focus back, it can mean slowing things down, and it can mean giving your players assets and resources. Functionally, you are the rest of the world to your players. As they act, you react. As they plot and plan, so too do their enemies and allies. Good stories will motivate players along their road. It isn’t your job to make sure they keep moving. It’s your job to make the road one they want to keep moving along. Time and Space One of your jobs is to manage the flow of time and the party’s flow through space. An internally consistent world answers its own questions. As your players explore and talk, remember that time is passing – keep track of where and when people are. Time and space are limiting factors that can greatly increase your storytelling resources. Here are some time-space relations to help keep things flowing. It takes ten minutes or so to cross a village or town; a half hour for a small city, but probably never more than an hour in the largest cities. One day’s travel takes you about 25km on average. As long as the conditions are good enough to travel, you’ll likely make it 5-10km per day. Even in the best of scenarios, this caps at about 40km per day. Horses, wagons, and caravans move as fast as walking players do sustainably. Moving faster tires them out. It’s normal, in an emergency, to trade a tired horse for a fresh one to keep riding hard. Riding like this requires a trade-off every day, and can move you up to 60km per day. The Chunk Method For longer time-scales, it can be helpful to keep time semi-abstracted. As such, Bloodwine assumes days pass in roughly two-hour chunks, as follows: Midnight-2am: Second watch. Starts dark, ends darker. 2-4am: Third watch. Starts quite dark, ends lighter but before first light. 4-6am: Fourth watch. Ends around dawn. Peasant breakfast. 6-8am: Dawn. Breakfast and packing camp often happens now. Peasant early working hours. 8-10am: Working hours (1). Noble breakfast.10-Noon: Working hours (2). Noon-2pm: Noon. Lunch happens now; coupled with letting the horses and mounts eat/drink. 2-4pm: Working hours (3). 4-6pm: Working hours (4). Noble supper. 6-8pm: Evening. Dinner and setting up camp often happens now. Peasant late working hours. 8-10pm: Dusk. Carousing, stories, maintenance, and occasional pet projects or backed-up work gets done here. 10pm-Midnight: First watch. Twilight gives way to dark. Never get through a time chunk before rallying players together to make sure they’ve got stuff done. The Place Method All players must be in the same “place” - they can be separate, disparate, and working different goals, but it helps to keep players geographically close enough that one player from one group could run away to find the others. The Cracked Door Method When describing locations, measurements and directions can confuse players when unnecessary. It can be easier to key things to more qualitative factors, for player memory. So, if you have a three-room home, you might have a foyer, a bedroom with a cracked door, and a bedroom with a new door. It doesn’t matter where they are in respect to each other – players will recall one of three places, and know that the foyer lies in between. Memory Keys Human memory discards the usual to save space, and often uses the unusual to jog our memory. To keep familiar places memorable, try and have one feature that is slightly unusual; like the village with the ten foot bear statue, the fork in the road with the twisty tree, the tavern room with the bent candelabra, and so on. ALL TOGETHER: If you find players at the table are having trouble communicating, sharing space, or knowing what’s going on, just to a quick recap, as follows: - Time chunk. - Shared place. - Cracked doors and memory keys. EXAMPLES: Malek, Mikkelsen, and Borru try passing each other a paper note in-game, subtly. Malek’s player seems confused – wait, he thought Malek was alone. Borru’s player furrows his brow, thinking they were working as a team. The narrator backs up, and recaps – it’s the second work hour, they’re all in Cragholm, Borru is in the tavern with the sign being repainted, while Malek and Mikkelsen are in the alley with all the broken barrels. Everyone clears their heads – Borru remembers that the plan was to pass the note through the window. He slips the note down, where Malek and Mikkelsen quietly pick it up outside in the alley. Mikkelsen’s player interrupts – he thought he was buying more bread for their journey. The narrator remembers that was last chunk – he finishes that transaction, and for the sake of brevity, describes Mikkelsen meeting up in the alley with the supplies a moment after Malek reads the note. Money and Things Adventuring in Bloodwine isn’t a pastime, or an unusual story in the players’ lives. Adventuring is an entire industry, a community. Most importantly – it’s a job. Whereas other systems might have more traditional systems with enchanted weaponry and linear progression, Bloodwine’s levelling design involves levelling in place, and new items aren’t often bought. As such, one core design principle comes into play: Plot, story, and exploration cost money. Work and jobs make money. Life is expensive. What does that mean? Well, simple – your players want to pursue plot, story, and exploration. Even if they don’t, they need money to live. To make money, they need to do jobs. This doesn’t have to be the focus, barely at all, but it’s powerful. As simple as making players think of hiring along travellers to the next town so they can make money along the way. Plot Costs Money The things that your players want to do should be not only self-motivated, but self-funded. If players want to explore dungeons, they need gear. If they want to travel the world, they need food. If they want to overthrow a corrupt government, they need soldiers or informants. Life Is Expensive Big problems make the world worth saving, little problems make it real. It’s all about which ones matter. You don’t need to count arrows being fired, but you might say that the archer needs to buy more arrows in town. You don’t need to keep everyone on a hunger track, but you can say people are getting weak and tired of cold, dry road rations. Have hammers chip. Have axles break. Have saddles tear. As your players whittle away resources to repair and maintain their things or themselves, the things (and people) they care for become more real. Suddenly, the sword you’ve been fixing and polishing for two months is your sword, not just “a sword”. Work Pays As adventurers, the players will make money solving problems... but these are often recurrent ones, boring ones, plain ones. They set a norm. Ironically, by making this boring – just more caravanners needing escort, monsters in the fields, something in the tavern basement – it renders it real. We all have real jobs that bore and tire us incessantly. Remember that for adventurers, the PLOT is the motivator that costs them money, which is unusual in their lives; WORK is the day-to-day schlock. The only difference is that your adventurers’ day-to-day probably involves a lot more blood. Time and Space Working within the previous principle, we can tie these two together. This world doesn’t have trains and asphalt roads – adventurers like your players need to guard caravans to have goods get through. And even then, imports can get expensive. As your players buy food and rations, have these change between regional and seasonal goods. As they work jobs in familiar places, have the same monsters and annoyances return. And when they move away, have these goods and annoyances change. People and Places Adventurers do jobs for people in places. As such, people and places are sort of important. Players passing through the same town might stay in the same inn, with the same server. Don’t treat this as a small world where nobody new shows up – quite the opposite. Fill the world brimming with strangers, and when the players see people over and over, have them learn who these people are. A world is truly brimming with inhabitants when the players know people, and know that those known people are only some of many. There are other adventurers – they might be competitive in the market, or even offer the players jobs for split pay if they need backup. This can be a fun way to throw friendly jabs at players as a whole. Other adventurers can have weird quirks and exotic pets and ridiculous getups as a mirror to your players – after all, they live a similar life. Places are inhabited and built by people. Time and Space The distance it takes for goods and people to travel changes how the world works. Villages might only contain what the villagers need within short distance, with the rest in a town. Likewise, towns often import bulk materials from villages to refine and process, before sending those along to cities and capitals for further refinement. As such, villages might be small, with a lot of people sharing an industry. Villages along major roads see a lot of strangers, while those along lesser roads might be surprised. Every day travelled is a day’s worth of extra danger and travel costs, so remember additionally that these places will cluster. Capitals and cities might do direct trade with the towns present within a few days’ travel, those towns trading with villages within a day’s travel of them, long swaths of nothing between the distant reaches between cities. Money and Things These distances make some things more expensive. In a city or capital, people might be happy to deal in coin, while villagers might be more prompted to trade their crop for a particular item they need. People who haven’t travelled much might see items from distant places as exotic – even mundane items your adventurers use every day from back home. It’s likely for villagers and townsfolk to travel together in large groups with guards to go to and from the cities every few months, for uncommon things like boots and spigots. Villagers and townsfolk are also far more likely to keep the bulk of their wealth in material stocks, stores, and goods, while city-dwellers might use a bank to retain coin. The Session/Table Transitioning to the real world, we have two considerations: how long we play, where, and how. For the purposes of most narrators, it’s helpful to know this well beforehand, and it can be an asset to writing. Breaks are good for everyone, and honesty is, too. If you want to play all-day-long games, it may be unpopular – most people will be busy – and it’ll likely cost a lot in food and travel expenses, so it’ll be less frequent. However, being honest and open will attract players seeking exactly what you have to offer. Likewise, games with particular themes, tone, and structure might have different appeal. The players who you met through knitting club might want to play a game where they can literally knit – meaning lots of roleplay with fewer rolls or physical interactons. Then again, they might be looking for a hardcore tactical combat game. You never know until you ask. All of these variables are a lot to consider, but function along two principles. Session Composition How you build your session means a lot to how the game flows. Every session has a hard start and end – meaning it’s obvious you’re playing or not. It may be helpful to add in a hard break (meaning it’s obvious there’s a break) to a long session, while an even longer session might benefit from soft breaks (meaning the game slows for the break and nothing critical happens, but those sticking around might keep talking tactics or roleplaying their errands through the city). These breaks can be useful for a narrator to gather/fix notes, as well as to think about how to account for player actions. Players desire agency – this agency can be maximized (and your frustration minimized) by structuring your sessions around points in your games where you’ll have more or less time to account for variation. It can be easy to check a few days prior to session for player decisions – if the adventurers are thinking of robbing a bank, making sure everyone’s decided to do that first means that the players all chose whether or not they wanted in... and now you can structure a session around the robbery instead of scrapping it all when they decide not to rob the bank within 15 minutes of game start. Similarly, ending the session the very moment they escape can allow you a lot more time to consider how their behaviour in the robbery would leave behind clues or trigger investigation. Arguably most importantly, a session represents when your real-world players encounter in-game time. Details are forgotten between sessions and over breaks. Structuring your plot based on your sessions works effectively to fit a campaign’s length to real world time limits, instead of struggling in the real world to finish a campaign. Likewise, having your session with one break split into two acts can help keep ideas and throughlines self-contained. Table Composition The group of players in a session matter as much as a session does. It’s important to consider what happens to absent players (if you play without them at all), how well players mesh, and what they expect from a game. It can be helpful to cluster analytical players into analytical games, combat-loving players into fight-heavy games, and so on. It’s also important to remember who the real people at your table are – who they like and dislike matters. After all, this is a group effort – everyone should be here to have fun, and that fun can be maximized. Sometimes even good friends don’t like the the same sort of thing in a campaign, while near-strangers might get along well in a party. It’s okay to just not like a plot or story; a lot of that is down to personal taste, with a story’s quality as something secondary. In particular for narrators telling more intense stories that cover more divisive or painful topics, it’s important to remember that people at the table might have wounds that you can’t see. That’s not to say these topics can’t be fun to explore, or even cathartic to those affected – what it is to say is that boundaries should be clearly established. Ask about hard limits – some topics that are wholly off the table. Likewise, talk about soft limits – topics that need considerations and additional concerns heard. This by no means puts pillows on your story. Quite to the contrary, establishing clear boundaries along soft and hard limits allows a narrator and their players to push for very powerful, intense stories by knowing exactly where and when to draw the line. The Adventure Often self-contained within a session or two, adventures are smaller-scale episodic plotlines. Adventures often take place in one fluid time span, representing a job or experience. When writing adventures, there are three questions to be answered: What' going on? There’s no excuse – you have to be able to answer this question. Now, granted, in practice you might answer this question with “Good question – what’s going on here?”, but the point is, there should be a clear answer eventually. This can take several forms. In the most basic form, you might choose to have a challenge. The players might need to survive a siege, or get through a barricade, or kill a beast. Moving up a level, you might choose to have a premise. This can flow together with the challenge. The players might need to survive a siege because they’re manning the garrison there, or need to get through a barricade to deliver a message, or kill a beast to stop a village losing their sheep. To end things, you might choose to have a thesis. This is a statement outside the literal adventure, a conceit or lesson the adventure is telling. This is often structured within a challenge and premise. The players might need to survive a siege with their garrison because they’re responsible for the lives of the innocents within the walls, or get through a barricade to deliver a message that wasn’t worth risking your life, or have to think about if it’s your right to kill a beast that isn’t killing people. Who Cares? This is a twofold question. As a primary purpose, it can be a somewhat brutal way of refining a story. If someone can shut down your plot with “who cares”, then it’s probably in need of work. As a secondary purpose, this is a concrete in-world question. Establish what’s affected by this adventure – and pass, fail, or somewhere in between, show that they’ve affected the world. If they don’t kill the beast, wool prices increase from a shortage; if they deliver the message, they might be sent back across the barricade with a similarly pointless message. This can also be a literal “who”. Players in one village might hear about a problem in a nearby village because somebody’s sister, friend, parent, or trading partner heard about it from someone inside. Why Them? This is a quick, but critical question. This determines if the party actually tries to do something, or tries to pass the buck along. It has to be clear that the onus is on the adventurers. Maybe the guard are wounded and need backup, or there’s no way to get help before nightfall. Maybe it’s direct – someone asks them for help, offers a reward. Otherwise, a plot hook involving a raid on a bandit camp might turn into a half-hour adventure where they ride two days north to call in the military. Lastly, we’ve got to run this by the previous chapters. Time and Space Where is this taking place? How long do we have? Will we have prep time? What time is it now? Money and Things What resources are at risk? How much will be needed? What special resources might be available for this adventure? How much does it pay? If it doesn’t pay, how much does it cost? People and Places Who told the party about the problem? Who is allied? Who’s the enemy – is there an enemy? What makes the adventure special in this specific place, and not any random village? What’s nearby – and how do the citizens respond to danger here? The Session/Table How will every adventurer take part? How many citizens will need help? How will you engage all of your table’s players? How long will this take out-of-game? When do you take your break, if you have one? The Campaign Campaigns are strings of adventures, either loose and interspersed with odds and ends, or tightly wound adventure-by-adventure. A campaign is a throughline that ties your adventures together. Try desiging your campaign like an adventure – a challenge, premise, and thesis. Ask what’s going on, who cares, and why them. When running adventures within a campaign, there are a few additional questions to keep in mind: What Does This Change? Every adventure either does or does not advance the campaign. While this might be an obvious statement, it’s important to remember that your players might expect one over another. If your players are hungry for advancement, they might expect more campaign advancement and be gripped with more urgency, so a filler adventure might be jarring and distracting – similarly, your players might be unmotivated and stalling between sessions, and a few adventures that don’t involve the rest of the campaign could be nice. Nonetheless, this is a distinct question that should be asked. While any adventure should impact the world, players are making active efforts towards a greater goal within the campaign. Try and consider all the players’ actions along the way, and how they might change the sequence of events. Are We Done? The trick to long, complicated campaigns is as follows: hitch your threads. Let’s be realistic – people only care for so long. If you’re weaving a story, try and keep your individual plot and story threads somewhat shorter – and when they end, tie them off cleanly, and leave behind a new thread. As plots grow, it can be sustainable to have more and more threads at once. When keeping plot threads open (let’s say 5), a lot of campaign momentum can be affected by how and when these threads tie together. If we end many threads at once and leave only a few active, this often represents a climax and a lull, to resolve built-up tension and allow for some relaxation and pause. If we have few active threads and add several more, these are complications – the plot will likely need to gain momentum to keep things interesting instead of just overwhelming. Tying all (or nearly all) of your threads to new ones at once can represent a twist, with a lot of things resolving as many new ones begin. Hitching small knots along the way grants catharsis to your players. Players need to feel like what they do matters. Ironically, to keep players interested and motivated, we need to have them finish jobs and resolve stories. Can We Go Back? Every adventure either does or does not leave an opening to fix mistakes. Think of this like advancement – obviously this is the case, but the answer matters and should be abundantly clear. This is a measure of seriousness and consequence for a campaign. As players make their way through the world, they leave behind impact and change. If things start to get too over-grim and dire all the time, it can help bring back hope if you make it clear that there’s an opening to fix mistakes. If things are too jolly and lighthearted, this can likewise be a way to tell the party that not only are there consequences to their actions – those consequences are already taking place. So, let’s bring it all together: Time And Space During a campaign, it can be really powerful to occasionally highlight just how much (or how little) time has passed, or how far (or how little) the party has travelled. Things taking a long time and happening over great distances can be easy, but there should be a similar twang of change when parties don’t go far or take long to complete their tasks. The same city could become almost unrecognizeable, and a vast amount of change in a short amount of time can lead to dramatic and overwhelming change. Money and Things Contrary to popular wisdom, I recommend you try and keep money and things somewhat balanced. The party’s accomplishments are immaterial, or uncountable. There’s still rent to pay, money to earn, and armour to fix. That’s not to say the party can’t have new things or nicer gear, but remember that true accomplishments aren’t measured in coin. People and Things Like the “time and space” aspect, which refers to going vaguely elsewhere, remember that the party might see a lot of change. Groups spending a lot of time in one place can become immersed in a culture and economy, while travellers might look back on all the different ways of life they’ve encountered. People met matter too – if your party has friends from home or made allies along the way, maybe send a letter or two. The Session/Table Who is passing along and keeping information? Does someone have a map? Was anyone taking notes? If your table isn’t the same people every time, how does the campaign continue with different torchbearers? The Adventure When looking back, how did every adventure play into it? What was learned? Dual Narrators You don’t have to go it alone. Working with a second narrator can really make a game pop, accommodates more players, and helps balance workload. Here are a few ways to work with two narrators. MAIN AND OFF: One of you is basically The Narrator, while the second narrator handles asides or rules questions. The off-narrator can also ensure details aren’t missed or miscommunicated. A AND B: Both of you function as narrators, but while one of you runs A-plot (the primary adventure), the other runs B-plot (side stories, complications, and comedic relief). NUMBERS AND LETTERS: One of you is the “numbers” narrator (setting difficulty, making stats, taking damage, tracking initiative) while the other is the “letters” narrator (doing descriptions, managing the table, processing more abstract actions). TAG: Switch out, take breaks! This can tweak any other system, tagging between numbers and letters, or A and B, and so on. FRONT DESK: Like the “main and off”, but the core/primary narrator stays primarily silent, watching and allowing plot to develop while the “front desk” narrator handles bulk work and focus. SCOUT AND COMMAND: Making decisions together, one narrator watches the table while the other gathers details and watches specific players. Moles and Rats Just like having dual narrators, being a sole narrator doesn’t mean you work alone. Having a rat can be a great way to pull out the rug from under players, while having a mole can greatly help along the adventure. RATS: A “rat” is a player with an ulterior, anti-party motive. This doesn’t need to be betrayal – a rat might plan their own death to bring in a new character, or might sacrifice themselves heroically because they’ve finished maturing as a character. It can totally be betrayal, though. THE TRICK: Balance for betrayal. When a player disappears or turns coat, it changes the mechanical game balance. Monsters are balanced asymmetrically – you might need to tweak the numbers to make the fight as good as it should be. MOLES: A “mole” is a player with an ulterior, pro-party motive. This might be an experienced player you’ve brought in to help get newer players up to speed, or a more trustworthy player to... nudge the party along if they get stuck. They might also help certain players grow more comfortable roleplaying, or might communicate to you that a fight is too easy or too hard. THE TRICK: Moles only need to know what they need to know now. To preserve the mystery and tension for mole players, try and ensure you only spoil things or communicate information when absolutely needed. 9 – TRANSCENDING the TABLE There’s a lot you can bring to the table that isn’t the table itself. When running a game, any number of additional resources can help flesh out a world and make a game more engaging. FOOD: If you eat at game, try eating what you’d eat in game. During break, maybe have bread and cheese, or paella. MUSIC: Quietly, and not pointing at the table. Music and ambient sound can help draw players in... just don’t drown them out. PROPS: Fake blood is pretty cheap. Paper for letters is even cheaper. Very, very small investments can go a long way in this medium. ELECTRONICS: Messaging platforms and forums can help communicate secretly at the table, and can allow for light play outside the session. NEWS: Publishing the in-game news every now and then can make a world feel more real – especially if the news is relevant to them. SALON AND WAR ROOM: What about just straight-up not having a table if you don’t need one? Set up your battle map and tokens, but then play on the couch in the living room, roleplaying from a more comfortable (and conversation-friendly) position until fighting starts. You just need room to put character sheets and roll dice. CLIPBOARDS: They’re, like, a dollar each. They’re awesome. Highly recommended.